Caramelized apple tarts
Instructions:
- 1 pastry sheet from a 375g/13oz pack puff pastry
- 100g/4oz white marzipan, chilled and coarsely grated
- 4 Braeburn apples, quartered, cored and sliced
- 50g/2oz butter
- juice of 1 large lemon
- 25g/1oz Demerara sugar
- 1â„2 teaspoon mixed spice
- Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas mark 6. Grease the bottoms of six 7.5cm/3in individual tartlet tins.
- Roll out the pastry sheet more thinly. Stamp out six 12.5cm/5in rounds of pastry using a pastry cutter. Use to line the tins, and prick the bases twice with a fork. Chill for 10 minutes.
- Line the pastry with foil and baking beans. Bake blind for 10 minutes. Remove the foil and beans, sprinkle in the marzipan and cook for a further 5 minutes.
- Quarter, core and slice the apples. Heat the butter in a large non-stick frying pan. Add the apples, lemon juice, sugar and mixed spice, and cook over a high heat for 5 minutes, turning as needed, until most of the lemon juice has evaporated and the apples are just tender.
- Pile the apple mixture into the warm pastry cases, then put back in the oven for 2–3 minutes. Serve the tartlets warm with crème fraîche.
- serves 6